June 4 in A.A. History

In 1878, Franklin “Frank” Buchman, Jr. was born in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Ann Greenawald and Franklin Buchman, Sr. [right, from left: Sarah, Frank Sr., Frank Jr., and brother Dan, in front of their home in 1894]. A Lutheran, he would found the First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, which was renamed the Oxford Group in 1928, Moral Re-Armament in 1938 and finally Initiatives of Change in 2001. The Oxford Group likely had a greater influence on the development of Alcoholics Anonymous than any other organization.

    Additionally, Buchman would be honored by the French and German governments for his efforts in promoting Franco-German reconciliation following World War II [left: Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany].

In 2002, Caroline Knapp [right], 42, died from lung cancer after getting sober in 1995. She was the author of Drinking: A Love Story [left: cover]. In her obituary, The New York Times stated that

    Ms. Knapp wrote about the disturbing incongruities of her life as what she called a “high-functioning alcoholic”: she was an award-winning journalist, an Ivy League graduate from a well-to-do New England family and by all appearances a happy, healthy and successful young woman. But drinking had slowly taken hold of her life, and she was desperate to conceal its effects.
    She was, she wrote, “smooth and ordered on the outside; roiling and chaotic and desperately secretive underneath, but not noticeably so, never noticeably so.” The book, published by Dial Press in 1996, was praised by critics for its painful honestly in describing the grip of addiction and the difficulty of overcoming it. In a review in The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called it “a remarkable exercise in self-discovery.” The book remained on The New York Times best-seller list for several weeks in both hardcover and paperback editions.